Sucker Holes

            It’s a New Year. How do you handle new beginnings? New starts have been one of my life themes. Born in Scotland, I moved to India, Oman, New Zealand and Australia and settled in Canada.
           Some of these moves pulsed with irrepressible life, and enticed me forward. Some were sucker holes well known to those of us who climb mountains - ominous storm clouds surround patches azure sky that lure the mountaineer upwards.
            Many years ago I started out with my destination vivid in my mind’s eye. I’ll write a book, revise my first draft and soon I’ll be an author. Easy stuff, I thought. After all I had published several articles. So focused on the azure sky and the alluring taste of success my eyes were oblivious to the gathering tempest. My mother-in-law, my supportive friend for thirty-six years passed away from a sudden heart attack. This tragic loss deflected me from the book path to the poetry path.
           On the poetry path many dragons threatened to devour my writing and my very being. Their voracious nightly attacks flooded my system with adrenaline. A fingerless male emerged from my depth and threatened to strangle me. How could my sensitive countenance hold such destructive self-doubting demons? My writing ground to a halt.
           Oh so slowly, I remembered that as on the mountain I needed the support of others. With help I delved into my psyche, dialogued with my soul destroying demons, released my expectations and focused on writing in the moment. Inhale word, exhale word. In time the sucker hole yielded its reward. I returned from my depths with the elixir of self-knowledge, self-love and a poetry book “Entangled Enchantments” and most recently my memoir “Circling the Edge – listening to the whispers of the wild soul.”